Umber
by Revrot
Summary: Years after the fall of Cipher in Orre, shadow pokémon begin to appear in Hoenn. This time the problem won't be fixed by a single teenager with a snag machine.
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: This story is meant to take place after the events of Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon XD. The most important thing to know from those games is that they introduced shadow pokémon, who were created by an organization called Cipher to be battling machines. These pokémon would occasionally go into Hyper or Reverse Mode, where they would not listen to the trainer's commands. The hero of each game would steal shadow pokémon from other trainers using a snag machine and return them to normal by "opening the door to their heart."

* * *

Day One

* * *

"Dinner time, sweeties!" Tori shook the pokéfood, and smiled as pokémon crowded around her. A pachirisu rubbed against her leg, and an aipom leaped onto her back, clinging tightly to her shirt. Although a few belonged to herself or Regan, most of these were only being cared for until their trainers returned. Some only came for a few hours a day, while their partners were at work or school. Others stayed for months at a time.

Tori truly loved running the daycare. Sometimes she missed the old days of gallivanting around strange lands winning badges and making new friends, but those moments were overshadowed by the happiness she felt about living securely with the ones she loved.

She set down the bowl, and most of the small crowd redirected their attention to the food. Tori would have to make a few more trips; several of the pokémon were on special diets, or only ate food provided by their partners. First, though, she had another task to attend to. Tori made her way through the group to a mightyena, who was sitting without expression or noise several yards away from the activity. This one had been left several weeks ago, and its trainer hadn't visited since.

Tori kneeled next to the pokémon. He met her eyes levelly. "You know, it's really important that you eat several times a day in order to stay healthy," she said, in what she hoped was a reasonable tone. He didn't move. "I would really like it if you would join your friends and have dinner." Nothing.

Her tone became more authoritative, and in a way resigned. "Eat your dinner." Finally, the mightyena loped over to the bowl and lowered his head. Tori sighed. This had been a daily battle since the pokémon had been under her care. The mightyena would follow any orders he was given to the letter, but didn't respond to anything else regardless of how much she coaxed or prodded. He never played with the other pokémon, or seemed to do anything for his own personal enjoyment.

Tori couldn't help but wonder what conditions the mightyena had gone through to end up like this. A teenage boy had left him under the name Uno Owen, saying he would be traveling and didn't know where he would go or how long he would be gone. The boy hadn't left a name for the pokémon or any further information, and the contact number he left had been a dead line.

Well, the other pokémon wouldn't wait because one mightyena was acting strangely. That spoiled snubbull was already tugging on Tori's pants, begging for the special treats her partner brought for dessert, and the contest pokémon all needed their own mixtures of berries to stay at the top of their games. Tori stood up, turning in the direction of the house.

As she did, she noticed a rather adorable sight.

A couple of months ago, a plusle had laid an egg while staying at the daycare. The trainer hadn't wanted it; baby pokémon were a pain for traveling trainers, and plusle weren't rare enough to be worth it. It wasn't uncommon for eggs to be left behind. Usually Tori would raise the baby pokémon until it was strong enough to live on its own and release it, or give it to a passing trainer with the time, patience, and resources to care for a child.

This plusle would be hard to part with, though. He was one of the sweetest pokémon Tori had ever met. Even Regan, who didn't have a lot of patience for pokémon who weren't useful in battle, brightened up every time she saw the little guy. The other pokémon treated him like a little brother, dealing patiently with his childish antics and refusing to let any new visitors give him trouble. He had become something of a mascot for the daycare.

The plusle had crept up to the mightyena with the nervous bearing of a child who knew he shouldn't play with scissors, but was too curious to stop himself. He lightly touched the other pokémon with one paw. The mightyena continued to eat, apparently unfazed by the disruption. Encouraged, the plusle began snuggling against the bigger pokémon.

Tori grinned, turning away. Maybe the mightyena was beginning to fit in with the others after all.

She heard a growl, and a horrifying snap.

* * *

Miles away, somewhere in Route 111, a twelve year-old girl was starting her gym campaign.

Well, to be honest she had started a few days ago. That was the amount of time she had spent struggling through the Fiery Path. But now that she was encountering and battling other trainers, rather than an endless barrage of wild slugmas and machops, it felt so much more _real_.

Then again, she hadn't expected other trainers to be so _needy_.

The boy was sniffling again. "Why can't we stop?" he whined. "I'm wet and cold."

For Mara, this endless rain had been a welcome change from the uncomfortable heat of the Fiery Path, but she didn't say that. "We'll be in Mauville soon," she said, hoping she was right. Once they got to the city she could ditch this kid.

She had run into him soon after leaving the cave. Arthur Vanderson had been trying to find a way directly to Lavaridge Town from Route 113. He didn't want to take the cable car because he was afraid of heights. Mara should have known then that he was bad news, but she had been too relieved to see another human being. They had battled, and he had won – small wonder. Her pokémon were exhausted. They had agreed to travel together for a while.

Here is what Mara knew about Arthur: he came from a rich family. From what she gathered, they had made their money by investing in the development of the Battle Frontier, which had been a huge success. For his tenth birthday, Arthur's father had bought him an eevee – not only that, but an eevee with a rare genetic alteration that gave it beautiful silver fur.

His parents had allowed him to leave for a gym campaign, as long as he traveled with a bodyguard. "I ditched him," Arthur had said smugly. At the time Mara had been impressed. Now she figured that the poor man had just become sick of the brat and quit.

Mara herself had grown up in Fallarbor Town. After years of running after wild sandshrew and setting traps that always failed at the worst moment, she had finally managed to catch a spinda. Her parents, who had never been able to travel themselves, had poured a good portion of the money they had been saving for retirement into resources for Mara's journey.

As she looked at the younger boy's brand new clothes and high tech equipment, Mara felt herself begin to hate him a little.

Suddenly the girl noticed a dark figure only a few meters away. She squinted, but it didn't do much. Because of the rain, it was difficult to see more than a few feet in front of your face. "Who are you?" she called.

Arthur was startled. Of course he hadn't been paying attention. As soon as he realized another person was nearby, though, his sniffles stopped. The bravado he had shown when he had first met Mara returned. "I'm warning you, you had better show yourself! Nobody needs to get hurt here!" he yelled.

Mara sighed. The last thing they needed was to make a stranger angry when they badly needed help reaching their destination. She was glad to see the boy regaining some semblance of courage, though, so she said nothing.

The figure came closer. "No need for threats! I'm only a traveling trainer!" The boy was probably a few years older than Mara. His hood overshadowed his face, but Mara could see blue hair plastered to his forehead, a friendly smile and a strong jawline.

Oh no, he was cute.

"My name's Seth." The boy held out his left hand to shake, and Mara took it. Her mouth suddenly felt uncomfortably dry.

"Mara," she said. Her voice didn't sound nearly as confident as she wanted. "This is Arthur."

The younger boy glanced between them, and seemed displeased by what he saw. "You said you're a trainer, right? How about a battle, then? One on one."

Out here? The conditions weren't exactly great. Seth didn't seem bothered, though.

"Sounds great." His smile grew wider, and Mara's heart dropped. "But afterwards, you guys have to answer some of my questions, okay?"

"Fine." Arthur frowned, and pulled out a poké ball. "Jewel, let's go!"

His eevee appeared in a burst of red light. Jewel stood still, waiting for a command – seemingly oblivious to the rain. Once again, Mara was struck by how calm the pokémon was. Few would expect to see such a well behaved battler with such a flighty trainer.

Seth's smile disappeared. His expression became stern. "Lily, let's do this."

A lombre materialized in front of the boy. Mara wondered if Arthur realized how much of an advantage his opponent had in this weather.

Apparently he did, because the boy grimaced. "We can win, Jewel," he said. Mara knew he was trying to reassure himself, not the pokémon. The eevee didn't seem afraid of anything. "Quick attack!"

Jewel had hit his opponent before the order was finished. The green pokémon flinched from surprise, but hadn't taken any real damage.

"Now bite him, Jewel!"

"Bubble beam." Mara was startled by the coldness of Seth's voice. What had happened to the friendly boy she had just met?

Jewel was hit point blank, without a chance to dodge. The force of the attack knocked him back several feet.

"Use zen headbutt, Lily."

"Quick attack!"

Arthur's command had come too late. Once again, the lombre's attack made a direct hit.

Jewel would be doing better if he didn't have such an incompetent trainer, Mara thought. It didn't occur to her that at the beginning of the battle she had known Arthur faced a disadvantage, and she hadn't been sure even she could have overcome it.

"Take down, Jewel!" Arthur's voice was strained and desperate. This would probably be his first loss, assuming Mara had been his first battle. Jewel ran toward his opponent.

"Scald."

A channel of steam shot at the eevee. For a few seconds the visibility of the battlefield dropped to zero. That would be the end of it, Mara figured. An eevee could only take so much abuse.

The steam began to clear. To her surprise, Mara saw that not only was the eevee still standing, it was fighting back with a ferocity she hadn't yet seen from the creature. Without instruction, Jewel was tearing at his opponent with the energy of one who has never known fear.

Lily fell to the ground, the eevee attached to her leg. Arthur was too stunned to give any orders. For the first time, it looked like he might win this battle.

Seth was as calm as ever. "Absorb," he said.

Green tendrils of energy left Jewel's body, binding themselves instead to the lombre. All at once, the small pokémon seemed to remember all the pain it had experienced. It stumbled, almost fell, and caught itself.

For the first time, Seth removed his right hand from his pocket. He was wearing some sort of weird glove. And what was he holding? A poké ball? Had the boy forgotten that this was a one-on-one battle? Was he going to quit when he was on the verge of winning?

Seth smirked. "You're mine," he said, tossing the poké ball. Mara realized too late what was happening.

Arthur waited for his eevee to explode from the poké ball, angry and ready to take down the jerk who thought he could steal him. It never happened. The poké ball sat still on the muddy earth. It didn't even look like Jewel had put up much of a fight.

"What are you doing?" Mara shrieked.

Arthur was too stunned to put up similar protest. There was his pokémon, in another trainer's poké ball. Could that happen? He had never heard of such a thing. Was he dreaming? In the weeks before he left, Arthur had suffered from all kinds of nightmares, where every possible thing went wrong. He had never imagined this.

Seth walked to the poké ball and picked it up. "It's a shadow pokémon," he said, sounding almost apologetic. "I have to purify it. Save it. I'll bring it back to you then, I promise."

Nothing made sense. Shadow pokémon? What was that supposed to mean?

Mara brought out her torkoal and spinda. "Shell, use smokescreen! Wendy, faint attack!"

The area went dark with smoke. Arthur couldn't see an inch in front of his face, but he could hear. A few meters away, Seth cried out. Had Mara's spinda attacked _him_? That wasn't allowed, was it?

"Faint attack!" Mara's voice didn't come from the same place as before. It sounded like she was closer to Seth. Was she playing a weird game of Marco Polo?

This time Seth didn't make a sound, but Arthur did hear a thud as pokémon hit human. Should he be helping? Arthur didn't have any pokémon to use, but he should be able to do something.

A scream. Not Seth this time. Mara? Arthur struggled to his feet. He hadn't even realized he'd fallen. The air was clearing up, and he could hear a loud flapping sound. Wings.

Seth had released a swellow. The bird had a firm grip on Mara with its talons, holding her neck with one and her right arm with another. She lashed out with her left arm, but couldn't lay a hit on the bird. With its wings, the swellow was blowing away the smokescreen. The lombre was fighting Wendy, keeping her away from her partner.

Seth himself was picking himself off the ground, looking a lot worse than he had before the attack. He pulled out another poké ball and released a pidgeot. Before climbing onto its back, he looked down at the two younger trainers. "I am so, so sorry."

* * *

Tori hadn't moved from the plusle's side in the two hours since they returned from the Pokémon Center. The Nurse Joy had done what she could to repair the tiny creature's mangled body, but they weren't out of danger yet. Joy couldn't promise he wouldn't still die in the night.

_I was supposed to protect him,_ Tori thought. _He was supposed to be safe with me._

He shifted in his drug-induced sleep, and whimpered from the pain. "Everything's going to be okay, baby," Tori cooed, in what she hoped was a soothing tone.

She was going to name him, regardless of what Regan said. Her girlfriend had always insisted that it was silly to name a pokémon you weren't going to keep, and risk leaving its new partner with a silly name they hated. This plusle would likely not live that long, though, and the thought of him dying without a name to identify him distressed Tori. She was thinking of Posie. It was cute, but also a reference to his positivity, both in mood and ability. Kind of feminine, but who said boys couldn't be named after flowers?

Somebody was unlocking the front door.

"I'm ho-_ome_," Regan called.

"In the nursery." She wasn't going to leave his side.

"Today was really good, Tori! I won against Sammy – got her manectric, can you believe it?" Regan was taking her time, setting down bags in the dining room. "She'll want a rematch, of course." She appeared in the doorway. Saw the cast on Tori's arm. The broken pokémon sitting in front of her. Her smile disappeared, and all of the color drained from her face. "What?"

Tori threw herself into the other woman's arms. For the first time, she believed that everything was going to be okay.

* * *

"We're going to find him." Mara spoke with the intensity of a fanatic, pacing the perimeter of their shared room at the Pokémon Center. "We're going to find him and get your eevee back."

Arthur said nothing.

After Seth had left them, the pair had no choice but to move forward towards Mauville City. The police had taken their names and contact information and promised to call if they learned anything, but didn't sound confident. Apparently Jewel was only the latest in a string of pokémon stolen over the last two days. Five different trainers had battled Seth and had one of their partners captured in the strange poké balls he used.

"How is that possible?" Arthur had asked. He was remembering again the sense of helplessness he had felt when his eevee disappeared, as if the one sense of control he had was being ripped from him. This wasn't supposed to happen; although pokémon thievery wasn't unheard of, robbers had to use nets and cages. Once a pokémon had been caught in a poké ball, it couldn't be transferred to another one unless it was released.

The officer had explained that Seth was using a tool called a snag machine, developed by criminals in a faraway region called Orre. The teenager had eluded the police so easily because, like Mara and Arthur, they hadn't even begun to contemplate the existence of such a device.

"The police are useless," Mara said now. "We have to do this on our own."

She turned her attention to her companion. "You have to become stronger. You didn't do anything when Jewel was stolen. You were pathetic."

Her words cut. Arthur wanted to respond, _There was nothing I could do, I had no pokémon, don't look at me_, but he remembered Mara rushing in herself to challenge Seth and felt ashamed. Mara was brave. She was a hero. How could a spoiled rich boy who had never fought for himself compare?

The boy met her eyes, a million excuses on his tongue, but couldn't speak. This girl believed in him. She thought he could become stronger. He would not disappoint her. "I will."

Mara nodded. Whatever disdain she had held for the boy before had been forgotten in her indignation. "We need to find out where he's going. He could have been heading towards Fallarbor or Lavaridge, with his direction." She stopped, with an odd expression on her face. "Wait. He flew away afterwards, why didn't he do that from the start? Wouldn't flight have been a lot faster than walking through that rainstorm?"

"Maybe he knew he would find us." That sounded wrong. Seth's theft hadn't seemed planned. But maybe Arthur was being naïve. "Or maybe he was looking for something on Route 111. In the desert, maybe."

Mara looked out the window, thoughtful. "Looking for something in the desert, huh?"

* * *

The boy who called himself Seth was packing frantically. Who knew how long it would be until the police were showing up at his doorstep? His hideout was well hidden in the middle of the desert, but he was sure they had ways to find it.

He wrapped up his sleeping bag and packed it into a harness on his pidgeot's back. Nowadays, of course, you could get high-end furniture for your hideout and store it using the item storage feature on your PC. He was staying off the grid, though. He couldn't risk anybody finding him through the PC. For the same reason, he had avoided Poké Marts, which used trainer cards for payment, or Pokémon Centers, which often kept records of their visitors. The boy couldn't take any risks.

He had already washed out the blue dye he had worn earlier and replaced it with scarlet. His dark hoodie and pants had been replaced with a blue tee-shirt and surfer shorts, as well. Unless he was unlucky enough to run into one of the people whose pokémon he'd snagged, he should be unrecognizable.

The boy's real name was Wesley Carlson. He had, of course, been named after the great Wes, hero of Orre. He wondered if someday people in Hoenn would name their children after him. Somehow he doubted it.

He would head towards Verdanturf Town. He doubted there were any shadow pokémon to be found there, but he could lay low for a bit, and return to Mauville City when they had forgotten him. If he had caught six in a couple of days, there was no telling how many more were hiding in the city.

For a second he remembered the two children he'd run into on the way back. He saw the righteous anger on the girl's face, and the boy's confusion and fear. How many more people would he hurt before he was done?

No, he couldn't let it faze him. There were probably hundreds of new shadow pokémon who needed his help. Wesley could only move forward confident that he was doing the right thing.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: There have been substantial changes to the format of this story. What was originally the second chapter was moved to be included in the first. The substance of this new second chapter is completely new. I don't claim to own Pokémon.

* * *

_Day Six_

* * *

A bell rang as the front door opened.

"Welcome to Verdanturf Day – oh, it's you." The blonde woman returned to her logic puzzle, disinterested. "Once again, the answer is no, no, no, and 'over my cold, rotting body'."

Brendan winced. He had been trying to convince Regan to let him breed some of her pokémon for months. There were trainers in Hoenn who would pay big bucks for a shinx, sneasel or yanma. His efforts hadn't been received kindly. Regan and Tori were both of the mindset that it was wrong to control the life of a pokémon so closely that you decided its mate and children. It was a hot topic in recent years, often dividing society along generational lines. That wasn't why he had come today, though.

"I have two pokémon for you." He pulled two poké balls from his belt, and slapped them on the counter. "I'm going out of town until next week. And if one of them should happen to lay an egg–"

"You'll never hear about it," Regan said. He knew she was joking; the woman might disapprove of his business, but she had never directly interfered with it. She grabbed one of the poké balls and began to copy the serial number into the computer. "We're going to need to copy your trainer card," she said. That was new. "And they'll need to pass a health examination before they're allowed to mingle with the others."

That was fine with Brendan. For his purposes, it was better that his pokémon didn't hang out with others. It was strange, though. "New security measures?" he asked.

"There have been some changes."

Brendan quietly observed Regan as she typed, providing information when required. The woman looked more worn out than he had ever seen her.

"You haven't been to the circuit lately," he said, at last. "I thought maybe you were just avoiding me, but nobody else has seen you either. Sammy's raring for a rematch."

Regan sighed and combed her fingers through her hair, a nervous tic she had kept since childhood. "I've had a lot on my mind –"

"Yes, the changes."

Regan met his eyes and bit her lip. Brendan did his best to look like somebody you could trust with secrets. The woman leaned forward. "If you breathe a word I'll tear your tongue out," she said. Brendan mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key.

"A mightyena went crazy a week ago. Broke Tori's arm and nearly killed another pokémon. All of the trainer's information is fake, like he hacked the system." Her expression was stern. "This can _never_ be allowed to happen again."

Brendan understood why they didn't want people to know. How many people would trust their pokémon with these two, if they knew this had happened? "I won't say anything," he said.

Regan nodded and kept typing.

* * *

They'd been in the desert for a week.

Sure, they had left a few times, running back to the Pokémon Center in Mauville with their exhausted pokémon before heading straight back. For the most part, though, their time was spent here. Mara and Arthur woke up every morning at sunrise and explored until it was too dark to see, at which point they would make their way back to the camp they had set up in an abandoned secret base.

Both of the children knew that Seth was long gone, although neither said it. They still held hope that there would be some kind of trail. If there wasn't, the eevee was likely lost for good.

Mara had given Arthur a trapinch she caught. "He might not seem that cool right now," she had explained. "But they can be pretty great when they evolve."

Right now, Arthur wasn't sure about all that. He stomped, getting his foot stuck deep in the sand. Not smart. "How am I supposed to win any battles if he's so slow? He can't catch anything!"

He'd just lost yet another battle against a wild sandshrew. The pokémon chirruped and hurried away before the trainers could challenge him again.

Mara sighed. "Trapinch are successful hunters in the wild because they're _patient. _They build traps and wait hours for their prey to fall into them. You shouldn't just throw away a pokémon's nature and fight in a style he's completely unused to." She was thinking of the hours she had spent building her own traps to catch her first pokémon. She had thought that this might teach Arthur a valuable lesson, but maybe she'd overestimated him.

Arthur frowned. "Okay, so maybe that will work for a wild pokémon. But what about a trainer battle? You can't just dig a cone and wait for hours for your opponent to wander into it then!"

"That's why you _adapt_ strategies! You watch the way a pokémon acts in nature and integrate it with your own knowledge to make a game plan that works for each situation!" Mara had never been to a fancy pokémon university or had a tutor to take baby steps with her, but that didn't mean she hadn't _learned._ Until she was ten, she had spent every second watching the pokémon that lived around Fallarbor Town. Then she had begun to usewhat she had learned.

The trapinch had picked himself up off the ground. Arthur could tell he was exhausted, but the pokémon still waddled over to his trainer. Arthur knelt. "You did as well as you could, Storm," he said, recalling the trapinch into his ball. Mara said that you should always congratulate a pokémon on its efforts, even if it failed.

The sun was beginning to set. Mara wiped off her dark goggles and adjusted the brim of her hat. When the pair first entered the desert, they hadn't been prepared at all. They had returned to the Pokémon Center dehydrated and covered in sunburns and spent hours shaking the sand out of their clothes. Now they were dressed in reflective, porous cloth that protected their skin and kept them cool in the unforgiving heat.

But what had they gotten out of this trip besides some new clothes? They didn't know any more about the mysterious boy who had robbed them than they did a week ago, and the one pokémon they had caught between them didn't jive with its partner. Their spirits were quickly sinking.

"Let's head back to camp early," Mara said. "We can head back to Mauville in the morning. Decide what to do from there." _We can part ways, _she thought. It lay between them, unsaid but understood.

"Maybe that's for the best," Arthur responded. The two didn't speak for the rest of the way back to camp.

* * *

Wesley had been crouched in this tree for over an hour. He had a pretty good grasp of the defenses by now. The couple had their own pokémon in the yard with the others, ready to break up fights and scare off predators or thieves, but they were far enough from Wesley's goal to be insignificant. As far as he could tell there weren't any in the house. A strange balloon-like pokémon stood guard over the storage cellar, but he could be taken out easily enough.

The man at the restaurant had sworn that the blonde one was a great battler, and the dark haired woman had been a champion back in the day, but he had been far from sober. After all the other ridiculous stories he had told, Wesley had been afraid that even the tale of the "crazy mightyena at the Verdanturf Day Care" would be false. He wasn't sure if he had been relieved or disappointed when he had heard an unnatural, strangled howl through the door of the cellar earlier.

His plan was simple. Once he was certain the couple was asleep, his kirlia would use hypnosis on the weird guard, and Wesley would sneak into the cellar easy-as-you-please. He had taught Cosette to open bolts using her psychic abilities in preparation for a situation just like this.

All he had to do now was wait.


End file.
